


Syntactical

by thealphagate_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-28
Updated: 2006-03-28
Packaged: 2019-02-02 02:20:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12717717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphagate_archivist/pseuds/thealphagate_archivist
Summary: What are words for?





	Syntactical

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

Daniel's office was drowning in words, his hands bruised with them. He left smudges of blue-black whiteboard grit on everything he touched, like shadows. He drank cold coffee from a smeared mug and grimaced at the taste, acrid and stale. He thought about hurling heavy objects. 

For three weeks he'd been trying to break apart the Sfakari language in order to write a treaty, while SG-9 performed the cultural needs assessment of the society and its people on P3X 598, the Sfakaria, to determine treaty terms. SG-9 was almost done, and while Daniel was able to speak it and he could almost write it, it still wasn't quite ... coming together. Certainly not enough for him to draw up a treaty.

At first it had made sense, at least in the initial oral work. It had been odd to see Jakobsonian binarism in the phonemic oppositions, but still. Beyond that it was fairly textbook, being an earth-derived language. But the written grammar that governed the attitudinal functions and their obviously critical role in word meaning and thus shared concepts? *That* eluded him.

It was as though meaning were fluid ... the abstract values of the words changed based on a set of unique declensions, conjugations and comparatives that were further modified by a staggeringly complex set of diacritics that could have the same word used with two or more utterly contrary meanings.

He'd tried explaining it to Sam when she'd come down to raid the last of the cookies from the tin he purposefully kept behind a rather ugly artefact in his office that gave Jack "the willies". 

"It's like ... their words are guidelines, and the real message is in how they accent the words. How they say them. That's the message."

"The medium is the message?" she'd asked, smiling around a mouthful of double chocolate. 

He'd chucked a whiteboard pen at her in retaliation. "Do I bring up strawberry quarks in *your* lab?" he complained.

"I only have chocolate quarks in my lab," Sam replied. "Seriously. Go home. Go to bed. Get some sleep. Translate in your dreams." She stole another cookie before re-hiding the tin. "You're too close to this, and you're letting your frustration ... frustrate you." Her hands spread out expressively and chocolate crumbs went everywhere.

"Thanks ever so much," Daniel said as she left. "Next time, bring your own snack!" 

Five hours later he was no closer, he was a hell of a lot more tired, he was drinking really bad coffee and the cookie tin was empty.

It was time to go home.

* * *

Somewhere along the way, without really ever consciously deciding, he turned left instead of right.

When he reached the outskirts of Jack's neighbourhood he parked his car and took a walk through the silent streets. He let himself in through the back door, into the kitchen. Found cookies in the cabinet, the kind he liked. Found skim milk in the fridge, half- hidden behind the 2-percent. He got down a plate and a glass and thought longingly of the roasted premium beans in the airtight can on the top shelf, but that ... that would be pushing things.

A whisper of sound made him turn from the cupboards to see Jack watching him, his face half-lit by the low-watt bulb over the stove. "I thought you were pulling an all-nighter at the base?"

"How'd you know I wasn't a burglar? Or worse?" Daniel crammed a whole cookie in his mouth before taking a healthy swig of milk straight from the carton, leaving the plate and the glass unheeded on the counter-top. 

"They hardly ever raid my kitchen," Jack replied, with an odd little finger waggle and an eyebrow worthy of Teal'c. "Thor, on the other hand? He's always eating my leftover Chinese, sneaky little bastard. And you didn't answer my question."

"Sam told me to go home," Daniel replied, his mouth full, not mentioning the five-hour time lag.

"So, her orders you obey?" Jack said drily, leaning against the doorframe, watching Daniel reach into the bag. "Put those on a plate, bring 'em to bed."

"You'll steal them," Daniel argued, but he did put a handful on the plate. Then he poured himself a half-glass of milk for good measure.

"I can't steal what I *bought*, Daniel. And is that your dinner?" Exasperation. Annoyance. Amusement. Incipient nausea. Daniel recognized all those threads in Jack's deceptively mild question.

"No," Daniel lied and Jack snorted. "I had cookies earlier, too. That was dinner. This is ... something else, to be named at a later date when I'm not stupid tired and high on chocolate." 

"You know, they have something resembling food in the mess, Daniel." Jack took the plate from his hands, then the glass when they reached the foot of the bed. He set them down on the low dresser that doubled as Daniel's bedside table. "You can even take it back to your office." He pulled Daniel's jacket off, then his glasses. 

"Yeah. It resembles food. Doesn't taste like it, though,' Daniel grumbled. "You took my cookies."

"I'm getting you naked, you idiot. It's hard to get you naked when you're making like the Cookie Monster, okay?"

"Naked and cookies sounds pretty good, actually," Daniel said musingly as Jack tugged down his pants. He knew he should be helping, but Jack like this -- slightly pissy and mother-hennish and all bed-warmed and rumpled -- it was sort of cute. In a pissy, mother-hennish way. "Though I think the crumbs would itch." 

"For crying out ... Daniel, take off your own damn shoes, get your ass in bed and get some sleep!" Jack pushed him to sit on the bed. "For a smart guy you're a real idiot sometimes." 

When Daniel was under the covers Jack reached over, snagged the last cookie and the last swallow of milk. "Why the hell aren't you a diabetic, anyway?" Jack grumbled. "And why isn't your ass fat?"

"Love you too, Jack." Daniel thought maybe he should get up and brush his teeth but he was already mostly asleep.

* * *

Coffee under his nose made him open his eyes, and it was just *wrong* to wake up when there was no sun but the coffee was hot and strong and, yeah, the beans from the airtight can had been used. 

"You drooled, there are cookies crumbs all over the bed and how the hell did you get that dry erase stuff up your nose, anyway?" The words were annoyed, but the fondness underlying them was familiar. Daniel reached blindly for the coffee and ignored Jack's version of "good morning, sweetheart." It meant the same thing, anyway.

Halfway through the mug he started to wake up. Or at least, his brain and his limbs started thinking about opening communications. "I don't suppose I have clothes here, do I?"

Jack leaned in from the en suite, shaving foam under his chin and his hair in spikey disarray. "Yeah. You do. Good enough to go to the Mountain in. After you eat breakfast."

"What's for breakfast?" Daniel stood up, took his mug into the en suite. Considered taking it into the shower stall. Knew Jack would mock him mercilessly. Continued considering it. Gave up and stuck his head in under the spray, which convinced his body to follow.

"Nothing chocolate," Jack said, opening the stall door, letting the cold in. He leaned in, patted the gentle curve of Daniel's lower belly. "You're getting a little soft in the midsection there, Daniel." His hand slipped lower. "Other parts are still pretty firm, though." He grinned lewdly, waggled his eyebrows. Daniel retaliated by pulling him fully into the shower, licking the hollow of his throat and biting gently along the edges of his collarbones under the spray. Jack made a noise deep in his throat and then his mouth was over Daniel's and his hand was on Daniel's dick and that, apparently, was the way things were going to go that morning.

They swamped the bathmat and both of them got water in their ears, but Daniel could once again appreciate why Jack believed in being an early riser.

He ate his toast (multi-grain, Jack's revenge for cookie crumbs) as he walked to his car, and drank coffee from his thermal mug as he took the long way to work.

Somewhere along his commute, he found the key to written Sfakari. 

It was all about cookies in bed.

* * *

Daniel erased one of his whiteboards. Three weeks of work disappeared. He wrote a sentence in English:

Are you talking to me?

He found the corresponding words in Sfakari

And then he rewrote it a half-dozen times, changing the inflections and diacritics.

And then he read each variation aloud, including even a really bad "Taxi Driver" impression that would never, ever leave his office. 

Then he called Jack to explain they had to figure out how to write a treaty with a people whose grammar ruled out doublespeak and legalese.

He took Jack through the white board break down, carefully not repeating the last inflection of the sentence. Jack spread his hands in the standard "and your point is?" mudra.

"They're ... like emoticons in e-mail. Or bitching about cookies and keeping them in your cupboard," Daniel explained. "The words are the least important part of the message, really. They're just ... rudderless vessels until the writer adds the rest of the markers, the signifiers of intent! It's what the writer *means* by the words, with a particular reader or groups of readers as part of the process of determining the meaning." He looked up and Jack was watching him pace about with ill-concealed amusement. He suspected he'd been waving his hands, too, at least a little.

"You're talking about the Safari treaty, right? Not, you know, cookies?" Jack asked. "Just for the sake of clarity. Since apparently clarity is the issue here."

"Exactly! The Sfakaria have managed to convey the nuance of ... body language and expression and intention into the main body of their written grammar. Their language is fluid, indefinite rather than absolute because meaning is determined between speaker and listener, writer and reader." He stood there, waited for the penny to drop.

"So, that means ... we can't write a treaty until we have the language and the intent of the language settled with the Sfakaria, right?" He frowned. "That's going to really, really make the diplomats ... nuts. I mean, their whole job is about saying "nice doggie" while trying to find a big stick. Now they have to tell the dog about the stick."

"Piss them right off, " Daniel agreed. "But it's still really *cool*, right?"

Jack grinned lopsidedly. "Lawyers everywhere in the SGC are going to fall on their fountain pens in despair, you do realize that? I mean, it changes the way we do business."

Daniel nodded.. "We're either totally above board this time, or we're screwed," Daniel agreed. "In the best possible way."

"There's a good way to be screwed?" Jack asked mildly.

"Yes, I'd say so," and he smiled, shifted the meaning subtly before getting back on track. "If we can't lie to them, hide behind our words, well ... they can't either. No loopholes to bite us on the ass later."

"There's always ass-biting, Daniel. It's like ... a natural law," and there was an answering gleam in Jack's eye. "Still. Go write up your report, explaining your findings and your recommendations. I'll pass it on up the ladder; eventually someone will call you to ask you to figure out how to restore the usual bullshit to our treaty process. It'll go in circles from there."

"Yes, sir, General." Daniel turned to leave, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm heading to the mess for lunch, myself. Why don't you come with? You can tell me all about the doohickyacritics and I'll pretend I didn't figure out you were doing really crappy De Niro impressions by yourself in your office. We'll grab Carter and Teal'c. It'll be like old times." Jack stood there, hand on his shoulder and it wasn't the words.

It was never about the words, though maybe Daniel had thought that, once.

"I'm having pie, after."

"Did I mention the little belly thing?"

After eight years, it was good that they could still talk.


End file.
